1. The New Testament has over 118 Greek papyri, 318 uncials and 2811 minuscules found with the earliest NT manuscripts around 150-200AD. Despite being known to disintegrate easily, they remained in good quality compared to other literature during that time.
2. Christianity was a persecuted religion in the Roman Empire in the first 300 years. The ability of the bible to be preserved despite being confiscated and burnt by the Emperors, speaks a lot of how much effort is put in preserving it.
3. The Greek NT was translated many other languages like Latin, Syriac, Gothic, Ethiopic, Coptic and Armenian. If there is any conspiracy to corrupt the NT during the earlier centuries, it would be a huge feat to overcome, probably as hard as eradicating HIV/AIDS today.
4. Thousands of followers of Jesus, including his 12 disciples and Paul died in defending their faith from the Roman Empire. If whatever they believed in is just a mere conspiracy and forgery, then they wouldn’t waste their time, energy, money and life to defend a cult that they create.
Thus the perseverance of the followers of Jesus in defending their scriptures, would leave no reason to "corrupt" them.
Some parts of this post are removed until I further articulate my arguments.
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8 comments:
this is unfair.1st, there are 2 testaments of the Bible?in what way it is preserved?
yes,Quran is in Arabic.thats how one of the ways it's preserved.imagine ur translating a BM verse to English than to Mandarin and next to Spanish maybe..the verse wont have the same meaning anymore..dont u think?
the history on the 4th point is wrong..u didnt mention the beginning point of Islam, where we suffered and so many died in the first 13 years at least? there were no easy times on the era of Umaiyah,Abasiyah either..my point on ur 4th point is, this point is not valid..u tell me, the Muslim Iraqis were tortured by the Americans, surely that will justify Islam?
there's an article by Dr Asri 'bersikap adil dalam penilaian' and 'Adili Islam berdasarkan Al-Quran,Bukan Cerita Orang' and 'a pure soul searchers for the truth'
http://www.mstar.com.my/cms/content.jsp?id=com.tms.cms.article.Article_12e3edad-c0a85062-e6246600-4d84425c
http://drmaza.com/?p=105
http://drmaza.com/english_section/?p=30#more-30
my conclusion is, in order for u to justify ur points, u have to get the authentic sources of information for u to compare..im a Liverpool FC supporter, n without watching Arsenal FC playing, and Im trashing about Arsenal now, is that wise?
Hi Azry,
Sorry if my perception on this issue has lack of research and substance, this is my wrong and I shall rectify that in the near future after exams.
The bible is a compilation of many writings, and therefore it is not preserved as one whole book, but rather different parts of the books. Thus historical findings of the books may be found in various sources, some of them found in famous archeological findings like the Dead Sea Qumran Scrolls in the 1960s (if I am not mistaken). I must admit that I need to do more readings on this.
I think many translators/scholars today would translate Greek into vernacular languages (chinese, tamil or english), even though they may use English as a source in the past. Some translations are done word-to-word (eg: NASB)and some are done more of meaning-to-meaning (eg: NIV).
However, one thing to note that followers of Jesus do not hold on to the view of "divine revelation" like in the case of wahy in Quran, but "divine inspiration". I hope I am right here (someone correct me if I am wrong) to say that the written word reveal to the living Word of God (John 1). Thus the preservation of the meaning is more relevant as it points to God's living revelation.
I am aware that Islam faced persecution from their enemies in the earlier years and even today. Probably I need to do more reading on that to further substantiate my thoughts.
So do christians in the past and present, persecuted by the roman empire, the western barbarians, the catholic church during reformation, secular and communist societies todays and in closed countries like China, North Korea and Middle East.
But what I was trying to get across was that the christians are as serious about preserving their scriptures as the Muslims, and accusing them of "corrupting" their very own scripture is unfair.
I do agree with you with bersikap adil dalam penilaian, bukan cerita orang and being 'a pure searcher of the truth' wherever it leads me to.
I hope to substantiate my thoughts more, especially during this summer. Thanks for pointing that out. Salam hormat.
Azri Fickry:
"yes,Quran is in Arabic.thats how one of the ways it's preserved."
This is unfair. You provide one info but leaves out another. Why didn't you mention about the development of Arabic text punctuation?
"the history on the 4th point is wrong..u didnt mention the beginning point of Islam, where we suffered and so many died in the first 13 years at least?"
And since when is this post about the Quran? Or perhaps the writer removed them?
Man. By keeping the comment box open with continuous editing of the same post would most prolly cause much confusion.
Still, it's your blog anyway. :)
Sorry Zefiriel. I've removed the part on the Quran for the meanwhile.
It was about my comparison of the Islamic Golden Age, which Azri pointed out besides various other points like the Uthmanic mashaf.
I dun see why translation of a text into different languages is a problem.... The United Nations meetings is a living demonstration of the adequacy of human language to convey meaning.
I don't know whether this applies to all languages, but there are languages that has many words that conveys a deeper or richer meaning.
Things are different if you're purposely writing sentences with the thought of conveying a message to people who uses different languages, or knowing that it will be translated.
I think the United Nations meetings example is inappropriate in this particular case. You don't use 'flowery' or 'deep' (which often is not very deep at all) English when you're communicating with people whose mother tongue is not English.
Some More Useful Info on Bible can be found at:
www.BibleIslam.com
"Useful" info?
Nothing is worse than trying to read the Bible the way someone reads the Quran.
What is the meaning of *inspired* Word of God?
But to tell the truth, not many Christians truly understand the meaning of that also, myself included.
I think that it is first and foremost, a compilation of past records. A history book, and a terribly honest one at that.
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